Driven to Insanity
by Angel Kitty Sez Rawr
Summary: Her childhood was training and hiding in the shadows. Growing from an infant murdering for a living. But when the days the Bird of Passage beguins to die, and the infamous organization collapses, Tira finds she's losing herself to a double personality.
1. The Beginning

DISCLAIMER!!!—Tira, facts from story, and some quotes are not me, but belong to Soulcalibur III !!! J

Please enjoy reading, as I enjoy the writingy parts.(I know writingy isn't a word.)

:p

_____

Chapter 1- the beginning

It was the middle of the night when the child began to cry. Flames exploded through the door into her room, slowing spreading across the carpet. Her mother ran in grabbing her precious baby, trying to find an escape—anything to save her precious daughter. The smoke became intoxicating. Air was slipping away with each breath, and then was replaced by the smoke's poison. The mother's skin was staining from the soot. She panicked and quickly ran to the window, slowing climbing out to make an escape. Her foot touched the grass as faintness was just reaching her. The mother fell to the grass weakly. The baby cried, lying in the grass by her mother as people and hoses screamed in the distance.

Tira smiled. It was the day to prove her skills to the leaders of the Bird of Passage. She was ten years old and this had become her first mission. The Bird of Passage was the name of the most infamous, underground organization in history. It was known for its contracts with powerful, well-known people to have their enemies secretly disposed of by the organizations most elite assassins. Tira had been raised by the assassins. She'd been training since before she could remember. Now she was ten years old, having the skills of thirty-year-old, well experienced assassin. Surely she would prove to be the Bird of Passage's most elite and powerful assassin in time. But today…today was the day she could prove to them she had what it takes to be their top liquidator.

After given the orders, under contract, she disappeared promptly. Her target was the son of a man, who'd become a threat to the seniority of Europe, planning to overthrow the leader of the organization and put an end to it for good. The leader, whence learning of such plans, had made plans of his own. What better way to destroy a man, than to destroy his flesh and blood?

Tira shivered with excitement in the moonlight as she watched the candles dim in the edifice the over-thrower retained. Her luminous, amaranthine eyes glistened with excitement. She entered threw a window sotto voce, utilizing the basic skill of silence first taught to her by the Bird of Passage when she was four. Soon, Tira found herself in the son's room. He stirred in his sleep the door creaked open. The boy was but sixteen of age with light wheat colored hair. Tira stepped closer looking at him. Her lustrous violet eyes studied him. Her heart pounded quickly. She leaned close to him—close to his ear.

"Don't worry…" She began in the faintest, harmonious voice. She leaned closer to him as his eyes began to slowly open. "I'm not going to take anything but you're life." She whispered. The boy swiftly turned around with large eyes. The image stained tira's mind as her heart beat became quicker once more.

Candles were lit and the glow moved between windows to the boys room. There was a cry of terror, then…silence. Tira smiled while watching from a tree near the domain. Blood dripped down her cheek. Beginning to disappear once again into the shadows of the Bird of Passage, Tira smiled as she heard once more the cry of heart broken anguish.


	2. Too Little Too Strong

Chapter two – too little too strong

Three years had passed since Tira's initiation assassination. She was becoming well-known in the Bird of Passage. She was young child, who'd been climbing her way to becoming the organization's most elite of assassins. She'd become proud of herself. Each kill filled her with excitement and pride—each kill more precise, and elaborate than the last. Each murder was becoming more and more like a game to her. As she had aged since her first kill she'd been training herself with a new design of weaponry. A ring blade the forger had named Aiselne Drossel. It was beautiful to her. A glimmering silver blade rounded into a ring, with three areas on the outer edge that formed three small blades. Each set of blades took the shape of metallic wings.

Tira grasped the inside of the ring, smiling as the Leader was announcing her next assignment. Her smile was beautiful yet deadly. She pushed her short, choppy, teal hair out of her face, pushing against the Aiselne Drossel. "Oh! Goody goody!! I get a new one!" She laughed to herself.

"Tira focus!" Their Leader shouted.

"Aw, but I am focused!" She smiled again. The Leader glared.

"This is extremely important." He lectured again. He told her of a group of bandits giving a highly powerful man a bad name by murdering people in the town under his name. The man paid thousands for the Bird of Passage to wipe out the group of bandits, and extra thousand if the leader was tortured. "We've received information that the bandits were meeting deep in the Carpathian Mountains to discuss their next attack."

"Oh! A party! Sounds fun!!" The blood of the bandits was already in her mind glistening in the moonlight. As Tira ran into the shadows, the Leader sighed.

"She's never dealt with souls of this sort." The Leader told himself wondering how his elite child assassin would manage.

Tira watched a flickering fire the bandits were gathered around. They were all laughing and clinking glasses of rum together. Tira watched silently, like a lioness watching her prey. Twelve little bandits and one ring leader she calculated in her mind. She smiled quickly. "Here we…Go!" She shouted jumping into the ring of bandits. The men grew silent. Immediately the men drew swords. "Come on! Let's Play!" She shouted as she danced by her Aiselne Drossel. The men charged at her. As each bandit fell one by one, Tira's game was becoming more intense. Blood poured into the night. "Nine bandits down! Four to go!!" She screamed playfully.

A man fell to the ground as blood dripped from his cheek. "Wha-what is she?" The two other bandits were shaking beside him.

Tira giggled with excitement. "AH! You're still alive! That makes things a lot more fun! So much fun!" Tira danced her ring blade through the three bandits. The one on the ground fell as blood seeped through every cut on his body. "Aww…they broke already…" She muttered sadly.

"Very nice." The voice came from behind her. The leader of the bandits stood by the flames watching each moment or murder on his men. There was something strange about him. The aura around him was a light, lavender hue in Tira's eyes. Tira's heart began to race with excitement.

"You're their leader!" She smiled ecstatically. "I've never seen a glow like that before."

"You're very skilled." He said flatly. He drew a rapier and pointed it towards her.

"OH! Let's get started! You're going to die one way or another!" She giggled.

"So you think!" Instantly, his sword swung towards her. The ring blade rung against the rapier as Tira ducked. She jumped through the ring blade kicking him, forcing him back. He ran towards her swung at her again, tearing her leaf green shirt across her stomach, just barely missing her skin.

"Die!" She shouted, holding the Aiselne Drossel in one hand and forcing it forward. The wing and the center of the blade lodged itself into him. Air forced itself from his lungs. She retracted her blade as blood poured from the massive wound in him. "Hmph! You tore my shirt!" She shouted. The man's eyes glistened with pain as the last wisps of breath left him. Tira winked at him. "Bye bye, now!" She lifted the ring blade beginning to leave, but she stopped. When the last breath left the ring leader, the aura was still there. Tira stared at it levitating as if it were a hazy cloud. Instantly, it blew inside her. Tira screamed. Being so young her body couldn't handle evil energy of such a high magnitude.

"What…What is this?!" She was shaking as her body fought the energy. Suddenly, things went black.

Tira's eyes opened. Her memory was hazy. In a flash it all came back to her. She shook her head. The moon was still out. She hadn't been unconscious long. Tira stood and ran through the shadows back to the organization.

The leader was waiting, anxious for her report. Tira walked through the doors. She wasn't feeling right. There were strange burning and tingling sensations in her right cheek and the sides of her body. Their leader stood when seeing her.

"Tira…" He muttered in shock.


	3. the Demanding one

Chapter three – demanding

Tira was seventeen and the world she'd been raised in was collapsing. There was an organization known as the Evil Seed slowly wiping out members of the Bird of Passage while she was on a mission. There was nothing left of her world but ruins and flames. Hate burned within her core. Tira ran to escape it, knowing there was nothing more she could do. She ran to escape the pain and the hate…but it followed her.

"Aah!" She shouted. Tira stared into the crystal clear water of a creak, catching her breath. The water swayed gently. Tira glared into the water. She slid her finger on the reflection across a thin violet line across her nose and cheek. It was a scar from the first evil soul she'd encountered in the Carpathian Mountains. She glared and splashed she water.

A figure appeared behind her in the reflection and everything went black. When she awoke she was in a bed in a little cottage of a city. Tira sat up quickly. Her memory was faded. "Where am I?" She said quickly. A woman rushed into the room.

"You're awake!" She said quickly. Tira heaved.

"Why don't I remember anything…" Tira panicked. Her mind retraced itself over and over and her memory never recovered. The last thing she remembered was leaving for a mission for the Bird of Passage.

"Hun why don't you just calm down."

"Who are you!" Tira shouted, lunging towards to woman, but Tira stopped once near her. She stood thinking silently as the woman tried to calm her. Answering each question Tira asked, the woman was spared from being torn to pieces. Tira lived with the woman and her family for nearly two weeks. It was a quiet city where everyone had quiet ordinary lives. Until one night, Tira's memory got the best of her.

"What happened to the Bird of Passage?" She asked angrily. The woman stared silently.

"It's been…dissolved." Her husband answered. "By the Evil Seed." He looked at his wife and smiled. "Good thing, too!" He laughed as Tira's anger reached its limit.

The house in the quiet little city was on fire and Tira was smiling. Something awakened in Tira that night. Something inside her, she'd never experienced. She glared suddenly at the flaming house with the woman her husband and their quiet little family inside. "You deserve the most painful death imaginable." Her voice was no longer harmonious. It was filled with hate. She wasn't herself.

She left the city wandering throughout Europe. Eventually people began getting in her way, calling her a nuisance. Each person she slashed her way through them, just like her old games as a child assassin.

Laughter filled her with each kill. Laughter that was the same as the part of her that had spoken the night of the quiet city fire. Soon Tira had begun to hear that voice in her head, begging her for just one more kill to soothe the pain. One more kill to hide the hurt. Travelling, she'd begun to cut down every person she's meet while she wandered.

The darker side of her becoming more and more intense. Tira found her Greece, finding information about a man named Nightmare, cutting down every person in her path. Her heart pounded with excitement.

"Find him!" The darker self screamed. Tira smiled. "Finally, someone to whom I can give myself entirely…"

"No…" Tira muttered. "I must continue my travelling; I must destroy the evil seed, as it had destroyed my world."

"Find the man in Azure armor." Her darker half pressed on. "He will give you a way to achieve you're revenge."

"Shut up!" Tira yelled. "You just want _him._ You don't care about the Bird of Passage."

"Its gone! Get over it! You're becoming such a nuisance! With him you won't be wandering a lone anymore! Remember what they trained you for! Do what you're told! Do it or die!" The rage forced its way through her and Tira agreed to her darker half….and slowly it was taking over.


	4. The first mission

Tira had formed two personalities since the meeting of nightmare and becoming a servant of the evil sword. She had become manic and on the other side she would become her depressed other self. But slowly, she knew that her other self was slowly taking over driving herself away from how she really is. The darker self was destroying her.

Tira was growing excited. It was her first mission as a servant of the cursed sword. But there was an unusual hollowness inside her. It was her first mission as a servant of the evil sword, but something was telling her that it was her last.

"Task one…Destroy Soul Calibur!" Her other self reminded her. "Then, we _free_ Soul Edge!" Tira shook away her thoughts of something being off before her other self caught on.

"Then a new host!" She shouted in enthusiasm. But how was she supposed to find the spirit sword _Soul Calibur_?

Quickly Tira devised a plan of traveling through Europe to obtain information on the spirit sword, and in her travels she would find a warrior worthy enough to be the host of Soul Edge, and all other souls she'd cut through would further strengthen cursed sword's power.

Tira found herself wandering through Greece. She walked top of the walls of the shrine, peering down to see the commotion below her. There was a young boy below her playing with his sister. He had bright blonde hair and a soft face, but there was just something about him. She froze as an image reemerged in her mind. It was the face of her first assassination. The boy with the scared eyes and wheat blonde hair. Tira smiled. The boy would surely be a worthy host of Soul Edge. She smirked. And his sister would be her first sacrifice to soul edge. Tira sighed. There was a woman walking towards the children. She had long wheat hair and both the children resembled her. There mother.

Tira glared. "She will surely pose a problem." Her darker self muttered. "Wipe out the mother, _then_ collect the kids…"

Tira smirked and jumped into the center of the shrine. "Sophitia!" Another woman yelled from the other side of the walls. The woman with the long wheat colored hair turned to her.

"Cassandra, take the children! Get them out of here."

"I'm going to take care of you!" Her darker self yelled. The mother of the children, Sophitia stood before her—a sword and shield in hand, prepared to fight.

"I don't know what you're here for, but if you don't go, you're going to force me to fight." She said calmly.

Tira's darker self smiled. "Bring it on!" The ring blade lunged forward.

Sophita thrusted her shield against the ring blade, blocking Tira's attack. Tira glared as Sophitia's blade came towards her. Tira spun in a dodge to the attack and grabbed Sophitia, throwing her into the wall of the shrine. Sophitia's leg struck Tira's stomach forcing her backwards. Sophita's shield and Tira's ring blade clashed again. This time Tira wasn't so lucky. Sophitia's sword slashed her arm forcing her close to the edge of the shrine where a small stream flowed. Sophitia kicked her again and Tira fell into the shallow water. Sophitia's blade stopped at Tira's neck.

"If you give up now, you can leave with your life." She said. Her face was soft but Tira could tell she was serious. Tira stood and jumped to the top of the walls again. Water dripped from her clothes. She glared again.

"I'll be back." Her darker self shouted as Tira then jumped away.


	5. The ravens prey

"Damn her!" Tira shouted. "I was so close." The Aiselne Drossel fell to the ground, just beneath a tree. "She will PAY!" Tira's fists hit the tree as blood began to seep from her knuckles. She shivered with anger as she looked down at her hands. Just more scars to the collection.—the violet scars across her face, torso, arms, and legs hidden by dark leaf green leggings, and sleeves. Her darker self screamed.

Tira froze. She felt her heart beat harder. It was as if her heart were beating in her head. Something was getting closer…She'd never felt an aura like it. Tira grabbed the Aiselne Drossel and jumped into the highest branches of the tree. A man with long wheat blonde hair approached. He had a scar on his cheek and he was dressed in a shining silver armor. His arm was slumped as he dragged a glimmering iron sword behind him. The sword… the aura was coming from the sword… Could it be?

Tira prepared herself, watching him as if he were prey. This was it. This was her mission. Tira watched him carefully. The man looked tired, but there was a strong determination in his eyes. Tira smirked. His soul was strong but filled with regret. Tira smiled, this was who Nightmare was searching for. He was the one with the spirit sword soul caliber. She knew then and there that this was who she was searching for, and he had what she was sent to destroy.

Tira leaned forward as her heart pounded harder, but then she froze. A black raven flew over to her shoulder and she held her hand out softly. It rested on her finger near Tira's face. She smirked and stroked it with her finger gently. Tira then pressed her green lips against its head and the bird flew off followed by several others in the sky over the man, following him as he walked. And Tira disappeared into the forest.

The man stopped and looked above him. The ravens were sitting in trees all around him, as if they were watching him. He felt uneasy but he knew he had to keep going. Soon enough he would be out of this forest and he would head to Ostreinsburg Castle – where he was heading to gather information on the demon in Azure Armor. He felt tired and weary, but he couldn't stop.

"I must keep going…I will atone for my sins." He muttered to himself. He breathed heavily as he tred through the forest.


	6. the man with the scythe

Tira held herself back from fighting him. If she let him keep walking, maybe soon he would grow tired. It would be easier to fight him that way. However, part of her wanted the mess in fighting him. Part of her wanted to see the blood and death that would befall fighting him. Tira sighed. Her mind was conflicting again and she was developing a head ache. Tira heard a noise behind her. She turned quickly backwards seeing that a man with a scythe had been following her. 'how long has he been following me?' her mind asked herself. She prepared herself to fight him.

"I can't allow a demon like you to get a hold of that sword." He said quickly. Tira could feel the part of her wanting to fight taking over.

"I'm going to rip you to pieces!" she said quickly. Her manic self took full control. Self control was chained in darkness. Tira's ring blade lunged forward.

The man with the scythe seemed as though he'd been studying her. He dodged move after move and forced his scythe forward at the first chance. Tira avoided quickly. She felt herself smirk. She spun the ring blade over her head and hit him twice in the arm. Blood began to seep from his arm. Tira pulled her blade down and forced it upwards. The attack missed barely, as he grabbed her arm and threw her to the ground. She swung her foot up at him and jumped to her feet. He stood staring at her. Tira didn't move. What was he going to do next?

"I, Zasalamel, place my curse upon you." The man muttered and disappeared into the woods. Tira recovered herself quickly and looked around quickly for the man who called himself Zasalamel. However, for the time being, Tira he was gone.

She looked down the path the other man went down as she realized she was getting closer to an old cathedral.


	7. The final battle

Tira rushed to the church. She needed to make sure he didn't get away! She burst through the doors.

_'where was he?' _She thought.

She stood in the entrance room looking around. Something wasn't right. She listened cautiously. In the distance down the several halways leading to the main cathedral, she heard swords clashing. A fight? There was a large bang above her as a cage fell from the ceiling. Tira ducked and rolled out of the way. "A trap?!" She shouted. She was growing excited and simply angry. Without much more thought Tira hurried down the halls to the cathedral.

As the sounds of the clashing swords got closer she slowed down. It wouldn't be wise to rush into the middle of a battle. She walked up slowly and saw the end of the great clash. The man with the blonde hair swung his sword against that of her master's. _Nightmare..._ She watched from the distance. Nightmare shoved his demon blade from the ground as a plan to hit him from below, but at the same time the man with the blonde hair thrusted his blade down. The battle was still. Silence took hold and strangled the situation. The men stood facing opposite directions and in a moment, Nightmare fell to the ground dead.

Tira's eyes widened quickly. She ran out breathing heavily in shock. "Who _are _you?" she asked quickly. The man looked at her quickly.

"My name is Sigfreid. A demon like you has no right to be here!" He his voice raised with anger. He raised his blade to her. She looked down at Nightmare, the lifeless demon on the ground. Tears welled in her eyes and she began laughing. It was if her two personalities had merged into one. Sigfried stood waiting for her first move. With a deranged smile and tears rushing down her face, Tira ran towards him trying to hit him with her ring blade.

"Die!" She screamed from the deepest part of her body. She ran at him. Sigfreid's blade thrashed foreward.

"The sword is mine." The blade burst through Tira's chest. She stood with her eyes wide and in pain. A tear slid down his face. Blood dripped down the blade and her vision began to blur. "I'm sorry..." His voice was almost soft, "but i must do this...to attone for my sins." His voice said quietly in the darkness as death consume her.


End file.
